The Safest Place
by GraveDancer
Summary: A MerDer one shot from somewhere around 4.06 to nowish. What I'd LOVE to see happen on the show.


**So I was sitting at work a couple of weeks ago entirely bored out of my tree and I started writing. And the first bit of this is what came out and well I continued from there so yay for a new one shot. It takes place around the time of 4.06 and is based around the moment after...when everything stops and Meredith feels safe. And it kind of goes from there. It's one of those things that would happen on the show if I owned it. Which I don't. And I'm well aware of that fact...so Shonda or Disney or anyone else...please don't sue me. I'm working two jobs and I'm still kind of poor so take pity on me or something. But yes...one shot...Mer/Der...second person...enjoy!**

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You didn't want to move.

Your eyes were closed, your body was limp with exhaustion and pleasure as something inside you, deep inside you, still quivered from minutes before. You weren't even sure you could move. He was still wrapped around you anyway, his own body limp as he managed to hold you tightly, his skin, slick with sweat, sticking to yours. You didn't have to open your eyes to know his thick dark curls were plastered to his head and a complete mess because your fingers loved the curls so much. His breath whooshed out of him, causing his chest to heave against yours and a warm tendril of air to play across your cheek, bringing forth a sting of tears to your eyes that you quickly ignored. You wondered if he was sleeping, holding you tightly, his hands splayed across your back. He could be sleeping. You decide not to open your eyes to find out. It would have been a waste, you didn't need to know. You didn't care. This felt good.

Right now everything felt good.

Everything felt safe.

This wasn't about the sex, him and you, could never be about something that simple, that easy. You weren't sure if either of you knew what easy was.

It was about this moment.

The earth stopping moment when it was just you and him and a bed or a wall or a desk or wherever you were was the only things that existed and everything felt right.

It wasn't supposed to be this hard.

You had met him in a bar, while you were slinging back your usual shots of tequila, contemplating the idea of having a one night stand that night and he had sat down beside you. He was supposed to be that one night stand; he was supposed to have long left your life over a year ago. He wasn't supposed to be here now.

He wasn't supposed to be the only place you knew where you felt entirely safe.

You had never meant for it to get this messy.

But he had been there, he had been there months ago chasing you everywhere, looking at you and smiling and for the first time ever you had let yourself believe in happily ever after. Because something about the way he smiled at you made everything feel better and happier and something inside you had wanted that. And it had been easy, being with him, falling for him. For once in your life something had been entirely perfectly easy. And then she had come.

He shifted suddenly, untangling himself from you momentarily before tangling up again in a more comfortable position and you ordered your brain to hush, to just sit back and enjoy the safety his arms offered.

And something in your brain argued that that safety was the only thing that made your brain feel free to wander.

You looked up at him then, finding his eyes open and him smiling at you and everything amazing spelt out along the planes of his face. Before him no one had looked at you that way. And that was the only way he seemed to know to look you. He had since the beginning.

With him, for once, life was supposed to be easy.

He wasn't supposed to pick her. Or maybe he was. You had expected him to, even as you begged and said words you swore you would never say; you had expected him not to pick you. No one ever had and just because he looked at you like that didn't mean he was going to be any different. You hadn't been surprised. And some level that had nothing to do with you, that had screamed things about marriage vows and obligation and what kind of man you knew he was, you had understood. You really had understood why it couldn't be you. But everything had changed with barely a sentence from him. He had become like everyone else. And even after he had left her, even after you had picked him, it couldn't go back to what it used to be. Because some tiny voice in you knew that no matter what he said, he was everyone else and one day he would leave. You didn't want to know it. You wanted to ignore it, but you had known, he would leave.

Everyone left.

So you had pushed him away, you had pulled into yourself, you hadn't given him the place in your life you ached to give him. But you weren't brave enough to let him in. You kept him away because it meant that when he did leave again it wouldn't hurt as much. You couldn't let him have all of you this time.

You knew he would leave. He'd figure out that you couldn't give him what you wanted, that you couldn't be what he wanted, and he would leave.

And he had, or he had started to and that's when everything had fallen apart. Because he had started to leave and something inside you, something you didn't even know was there and you had no idea what it was, didn't want to let him. Something clung to him when you didn't even want to. You couldn't let him in but you couldn't let him leave. He had told you he couldn't breathe for you and the idea of him not breathing for you had been terrifying. So you had begged him, you had promised that you'd be better. And he had come back again. Except for he hadn't completely. He hadn't been there when you needed him most, after your dad, after everything and you hadn't known what to do. Because you had needed him there, whether you expected him to be there or if you had even deserved it, you had needed him.

He had met someone else.

You knew it would come to this.

He was going to leave you.

He hadn't. Instead he had begged you to let him in, he had called you on your game and he had begged. And he had said things, huge things, about how he couldn't leave you because you were the love of his life. You were never meant to hear those words so you chose to ignore the tiny thrill that went shooting down your spine.

You took the easy way out and you left him.

You had ended everything. You had pushed him away. You had left him. You had even lied to him when he said he had asked for too much. It wasn't too much, it was perfect but you had lied. You had left him before he could leave you.

Except he hadn't left you.

He was still here. He hadn't gone anywhere. He had stayed with you even when you hadn't stayed with him. He gave you what you could handle. He gave you any space and time you needed. And sometimes it looked like not being with you the way he wanted was slowly killing him, but he continued to stay. He talked about meeting someone, sometimes he murmured something about dating, and yet he was with here every night. He was here like this, holding you like this, like nothing else mattered than these few moments while he held you tightly.

And at these moments it was easy to pretend that nothing had happened, that it was just as easy as it had been when everything started.

You wanted this to be everything you wanted.

It was everything you wanted. You wanted to be this girl, the one that curled up in the arms of the love of your life and be happy, entirely and completely happy. In these moments all you wanted to be was the girl that did believe in true love, happily ever after and all of those things that he so fully believed in.

But you weren't.

You were the girl with the daddy issues and the mommy issues and the strange awkward relationship with your sister that you had no idea how to manage. You were the girl that lives in a hostel with people who didn't seem to be able to manage their own lives. You didn't know how to manage your own life let alone manage a relationship with this entirely perfect man that held you tightly before you escaped from his bed.

God, you didn't want to escape tonight.

"What did you do tonight?" he suddenly murmured, wiping a tear off your cheek that you hadn't even noticed was there.

"Nothing," you whisper. "You?"

"Nothing," he echoed.

And then he ducked his head down and brushed his lips against yours, too soft to even be considered an actual kiss.

And suddenly it didn't matter.

None of it mattered.

He had brushed his lips against yours and everything had come washing over you as another tear poured down your cheek. You were her again. You were in the bar the first night, giggling at something the handsome stranger beside you had said and then he was kissing you and everything had somehow clicked even if you had been too drunk to notice. He was that guy again, the one that had followed you everywhere, begging you to give him a chance. You wanted to be that girl again, the one that had been so hopelessly in love with him that you were finally dreaming of forever.

The crap of the last year didn't matter.

He was that guy that smiled at you, smiled at you in a way you didn't think happened outside of Disney fairy tales. He was the person that made everything seem better. He had held you in that stupid supply closet when you had needed someone, when you had needed him. He had taken your dog. That's what mattered, those hours spent walking your dog. He had come back. The realization shook you, causing him to frown slightly but he had come back. Everyone left and he was the one that came back, to tell you that he loved you and that leaving you had been a mistake. He had been there. He had been there to hold you when you needed him. He had been the one to pull you out of the water and…you loved him. He was the man you loved. And he was still here, even when you had given him more than enough reasons to leave.

In some weird twisted way, he had never left you.

He had always been here.

And some tiny voice, that had been there all along but was growing stronger by the second kept telling you that he never would.

"Derek?"

"Hmm?" he responded, in a way that was so purely him you felt tears prick your eyes again.

"I…I love you."

He tensed against you, his eyes growing wide and wet as he looked at you carefully, almost liked you could disappear at any second, or at any rate take the words back. You weren't going to take them back, even as you felt your own body tighten with nerves, you couldn't take them back. Even though the words had come out entirely unplanned, you had meant them far too deeply to imagine taking them back.

You loved him.

"I love you too," he finally breathed.

And then he pulled you into his arms, crushing you against his chest as he squeezed you to him. You felt something wet hit your shoulder as he buried his face in your hair.

You'll be okay.

You don't know how. You're entire life has been a mess and recently things have been swirling around you at an increasing rate, but you would be okay. You'd figure life out and you would be okay.

Because he wasn't going to leave you.

Because you suddenly felt like maybe, just maybe, you'd be capable of doing just about anything.

You were safe.

_As long as I'm with you  
As long as I can feel you  
That's all I need to keep me going  
On and on and on and on...  
I wanna believe that I can save the world  
And make it right, but I'm only human  
And you've got a hero's face  
Right here in your arms is safest place  
The safest place_


End file.
